


Captain America: the First Avenger, Fem'verse

by BairnSidhe



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, BAMF Women, F/F, Fem'verse, started as a ficlet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:50:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2308688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a different world.  Perhaps a better one.<br/>The Great War raged on longer, the death toll catastrophic.  So when the women of the world stepped forward to fight, many countries let them, abolishing rules against women in the armed forces.  So when another War threatened the fate of the world, Stephanie Rogers and Jane "Becky" Barnes wind up on the front lines.  It's a story we've seen before, but not quite like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was a different world.  Perhaps a better one.

The Great War raged on longer, the death toll catastrophic.  So when the women of the world stepped forward to fight, many countries let them, abolishing rules against women in the armed forces.  Some did not.  The Ottoman Empire in particular denied the use of women warriors, a fact that military strategists would later attribute their defeat to.

When the War was won, so many limitations on women had been overturned that it was clear the women of America, Britain and France would never willingly become chattel again.  So it was no surprise that when a new War, the second of its kind, came to pass, that women alongside men lined up to serve their countries.  One such young lady was Stephanie Gloria Rogers, known around Brooklyn as Stevie.  Stevie was a delicate girl, often mistaken for much younger.  She often got sick, and really the only reason she lived through most winters was her best friend, Jane Rebecca Barnes, known as Becky.  Becky was a full figured gal, a much sought after dance partner, and strong enough that she could get regular work at the docks or at a mechanic’s garage.  But Becky always made sure Stevie had thick sweaters, enough food, and medicine when she got sick (no mean feat in the Depression).

Stevie was, of course, rejected from the Army on medical grounds, though she tried to get in four times before she succeeded.  Becky, on the other hand, was drafted.  She told Stevie she had volunteered, because no way did she want to admit to Stevie she was too scared to volunteer.  The night before she shipped out they had a fight, and the next time she saw Stevie, things would be much different.


	2. Chapter 2

Stevie agreed to take part in a trial, an experiment to make super-soldiers.  It worked, turning a delicate, bird like girl into an Amazonian warrior woman.  Although, it seemed that fate would decree that she be the only one, as a spy killed the doctor who invented the procedure.  Stevie chased him across town, only vaguely upset that she was in a bra and trousers and not much else as she ran after his car.  She caught him eventually, accidentally destroying the last of the miracle serum before the spy bit down on a poison tooth.  Unsatisfied that there was only one super soldier, and a girl he hadn’t approved of to begin with, the Colonel in charge of the program threatened to send her to Alamogordo as a lab rat, so when a politician offered her the chance to actually do something, she leapt at it.

Being a part of a traveling show selling bonds was not what she had thought she would do for the war.  As Captain America, she represented the fight without ever being a part of it.  At least they gave her a tolerable nickname, one of the other options had been Lieutenant Liberty, with a costume themed after the famous Statue of Liberty.  When the show went on the USO tour, Stevie was glad to get closer to the fight.  Her first show overseas was a disaster, including slurs being shouted at her that had hardly ever been used since before the First World War.  It only got worse when she learned that Becky had been captured.

Stealing a helmet and a gun, Stevie was trying to hotwire a jeep when Agent Carter offered the use of Howard Stark’s Twin Beech plane to drop her off.  Later tales would tell of how Stephanie Rogers single-handedly freed over four hundred men and women from captivity.  Stevie herself would not recall the heroics.  Instead she will look back at the first time she met the men and women who would become the Howling Commandos.  James Montgomery Falsworth, a British special forces operative.  Timothy “Dum-Dum” Dugan, a corporal in the US Army, who got in a minor fight with Jim Morita (Private first class, US Army, from _Fresno California_ , for Pete’s sake man) over his ethnicity.  Rounding out the group were Gabriella Jones, half Negro half Latina Technician Fifth Grade, and Jacqueline Dernier, a slightly crazy explosives expert who may or may not have any actual connection to the French army.  Stevie learned quickly that some questions should not be asked about the near-suicidal bomb maker.

She found Becky on a table in a lab, and the less she thinks about that the better.


	3. Chapter 3

The walk back was brutal in some ways.  Her new body could easily handle the distance, but seeing the others, weak from starvation and exhaustion, stumbling and staggering, _that_ was painful.  Seeing the vacant look in Becky’s eyes as she walked, merely putting one foot in front of the other, that was excruciating.

They didn’t make it that far the first night.  It was simply too dark.  But they cleared the patrol lines for the Hydra base by maybe five miles before Stephanie called halt.  They formed circles in circles.  The most injured in the middle of the make-shift campground, the most battle ready on the outside.  There was no formal watch rotation, but every so often someone from the middle rings would stealthily creep to the outer ring and find someone who was falling asleep to trade weapons for a spot further in.  Stevie tried her hardest to stay on the outer ring, watching over the camp, keeping her artificially-better-than-perfect vision on the trees and the bushes, looking for danger.  But over and over, the men and women of the 107th tried to take her place, to get her to rest.  It didn’t happen until Jones, the pretty dark-skinned Technician came to sit next to her.

“You doin’ ok, Captain?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I’m not going to go sleep, so don’t try.”

“Fine then.  Don’t sleep.  I’m not going to tell you otherwise.  I just wanted to ask you somethin’.”

“What?”

“Well, Sarge, that is, Becks told me ‘bout her girl back home, said you were a skinny little thing, and obviously you ain’t now, so I’m assuming that the story of Captain America in the comics isn’t too far off.  They gave us a package of them in one of the Red Cross care kits, you know.  So what I want to know is, do you think that whatever they did is going to let you keep going for 96 hours straight?  I did the math, the numbers of days it will take four hundred people to march back to the last known location of the base camp.  We may have a few tanks that can be ridden and one of the French boys thought to grab a troop transport, but we’re still limited to the speed the slowest walkers go, unless we leave folks behind.  If you can keep going without sleep that long, that’s fine, but I don’t want to tell a friend he has to get out of the troop transport so that Captain America can lay her big ol’ body down because she didn’t get any sleep.”

“You make a good argument.”  Without further talk, Stevie handed her gun to Gabriella and took her dented shield back to the middle ring.  She lay down and was asleep almost instantly.


	4. Chapter 4

They marched back into base camp five days later.  It would have been sooner, but they ran into resistance along the enemy lines.  Jones cussed like a sailor as she fought, because damn did she hate to be wrong and she’d given an estimate based on purely walking, not taking a day to fight and rest up.  Her salty language ran smoothly from English to Spanish to German to French and back again.  Something she said in French caused one of the French soldiers to turn beet red and stammer, and Jaqueline to burst out into joyous laughter.

After that particular fight, as they were forming up their circular protection, Falsworth came over to where Becky and Stevie were leaning up against one another.  He sat very properly on the ground and for a moment it looked like he would sleep sitting up ramrod straight.  Then Becky leaned over and pulled his arm until the Brit relaxed into her arm.  Stevie looked at her oddly, and Becky replied “Old Mister Corduroy.”

Mister Corduroy had been a neighborhood institution.  He had fought in the Great War, the first one, as this one was shaping up to be of similar magnitude.  He’d been grouchy and yelled at kids who crossed his “lawn” (a more pitiful square of grass could not be fathomed), but he would also yell at boys who teased girls and sometimes tell stories of how he was rescued by “the warrior women who saved the day”.  He’d been just fine until Missus Corduroy died, and then the next time he was seen was a week after the funeral, being carried out on a gurney.  Sarah Rogers had explained to her girls that sometimes war broke men and only having someone to hold them let them stay alive.  If Falsworth needed to be held, then by God, Becky would hold him.

Arriving in triumph, the men and women who had been held captive promptly received medical care, beds and food.  Stevie resigned herself to disciplinary action, but there was no way Colonel Phillips could possibly punish her and not be the victim of friendly fire.  Becky called for a cheer for Captain America, which led to a rousing, rowdy cacophony of celebration and praise. A slightly bitter smile curled Becky's lips as everyone saw Stevie the way she always had,


End file.
